The present invention relates to apparatus and methods for division of food products into separate portions prior to cooking thereof.
Food products are often divided into portions and the portions then grouped together and packaged for sale to consumers. For example, bacon is usually cut into slices. In some cases these portions are cooked by the food processor prior to packing.
The food product is typically cut into individual portions of a given thickness by a cutting machine. The fat in a food product liquefies during the cooking process and so a portion having a higher fat content will experience a greater weight reduction during cooking than a portion of the same initial volume but a lower fat content. Accordingly, to ensure that cooked portions are not under-weight, the cutting thickness needs to be set so as to ensure that those portions having the highest fat content still meet a minimum weight threshold after cooking. However, slices having a high lean content will exceed this minimum threshold to a significant extent, resulting in substantial “give-away” of product, that is, an excess of product in packs specifying a fixed minimum weight.
The food product to be divided up by a cutting machine is usually presented in the form of an elongated food product log. The product itself may be in a naturally-occurring form, such as a side or belly of pork or beef. These natural products have discrete areas of lean and fat, and possibly bone or other constituent tissue types.
Alternatively, products may be in a reconstituted form and comprise for example, chicken pieces packed together in a log or minced beef and so on. This relatively homogeneous material is then formed into a product log for slicing. Unlike a natural product, reconstituted products do not comprise discrete areas of material, because the constituents are inter-mingled.